Scenes from the Life of Phil Shepard
by AManAdrift
Summary: This work holds vignettes and miscellaneous character pieces about my main Shep, further elucidating his history and his relationship with Liara and the rest of the Normandy gang for them as are interested!
1. Family

**Scenes from the Life of Phil Shepard**

 **Family**

There was a hand on his chest, was the first fact that impinged itself on his awareness as Shepard awoke. By its blade it rested gently there, its little finger loosely curled and half-buried in the bed of wiry black hairs it had found. The skin of the hand was blue, darkening to a pale violet beneath the fingernails. Shepard had to breathed deeply to arrest a sob that bade fair to break loose when it came to him that he could remember trimming those very nails to their utilitarian position, with their edges behind the pads of the fingertips, where they would pose no danger to white gloves donned at the behest of a librarian about to bring a treasured codex out for consultation, nor scratch a Prothean artefact when examining it in a museum, or — and Shepard could remember exulting in the experience — the first time this very hand and its fellow had liberated such a find from fifty millennia of imprisonment in the soil of an uncharted world.

The implications weighed on him. Delightfully, to be sure, as delightfully as Liara's meagre weight leaned against the left side of his body as they lay there, her head pillowed on his shoulder, but they weighed on him nonetheless. Her weight was too meagre, was the next thought that bubbled to the surface of his mind: he could remember absorbing herself in surveying a dig-site, staking out the exact spot where the next trench would go, then turning back to the last one, abandoning heavy equipment in favour of shifting the soil using her biotics, then by hand, then brushing or blowing the dirt away as she reached the right stratum; finally, Shepard remembered noticing that the local star had passed overhead too many times for one who still had not eaten or slept, even taking into account the short day-cycle.

Liara stirred, detaching herself from Shepard's site and moving her head to her own pillow. Shepard looked up at the ceiling a beat longer, fighting free of the toils of a new and beguiling past, then turned onto his side to face an infinitely more beguiling present and future.

 _God, you're beautiful._ Shepard's body arched as for a crazy moment Liara's eyes seemed wide and blue enough for him to dive bodily into. A smile quirked her lips as she considered the mental image, though he'd done nothing more to communicate it than lean forward slightly. His voice when he finally spoke was a lost-little-boy whisper of wonder:

"We don't have to say anything, do we?"

She smiled indulgently. "No, we don't, but it is customary to. It will help us remember which of us is which."

No smirk, no sarcastic lilt in her voice: Shepard remembered a sex-ed. class Liara had taken and realised before she had finished speaking that she was serious. He gulped.

"I…" he began, and this time Liara really did smirk as his realisation that he couldn't think of anything to say was written plainly on his features. She came to his rescue.

"You made it easy," she whispered. "I wanted this so much… so _soon_. I came so close to… to offering… you know" — He nodded. — "…that I scared myself. But you waited… and then when we joined, that first time…" Her voice became little more than a breath, shaped into hints at speech sounds by her lips as he watched them, enthralled. "…it was like coming home."

Shepard still couldn't quite believe that, but the part of their joint consciousness that had been Liara had patiently spent hours the night before insisting that, however many dark places there might be in his memory, he still had her trust and her love, and — there was the real sticking point — he still deserved them. No need to rehash that little debate again.

"I love you." He said simply.

She smiled. He felt like his heart would stop. "I love you too." He was sure it would. She grinned at the look in his face, snaked both arms around him and pulled him in for a kiss. Turned out he survived. He put his own arms around her and felt her cheek rub against the line of his jaw as she luxuriated in the feeling of enveloped — he knew she loved the sheer width of his shoulders — he shivered as she made a spine-tingling purring noise and her warm breath tickled his ear.

"We need to go. We're probably already late." He rubbed his cheek against hers.

She tightened her arms around him. "Yes, we should." They kissed some more.

They cuddled a little longer, then with infinite reluctance Liara broke the embrace and got out of bed. Like a sparking, intermittent electrical contact, Shepard felt his always-sluggish sexual response flicker to something approaching life as he watched her disappear into the bathroom in all her naked glory. The feeling was gone as soon as it had come, and he stretched for a bit, then rolled lazily out of bed, grinning to himself — and not for the first time — over the fact that he had at last found someone who didn't expect anything more from him. As he sorted through their clothes and listened to her making a brisk toilette, an implication occurred to him.

"You look so… human, or maybe humans look asari… you know what I mean. It can't be a coincidence, can it?"

"Actually," she called out over the sound of the running tap, "we're all hideous tentacle monsters, using our insidious mind powers to seduce honest colony kids."

"Ah," he returned her deadpan tone as they passed one another in the doorway of the bathroom, "that would account for it." He dropped a kiss on her nose, and went for his own wash and brush-up.

" _Actually_ actually," she called out to him as she got dressed, "I've often wondered: given the morphological similarities between humans and asari, quarians and turians, fauna generally on life-bearing worlds throughout the galaxy… After what happened to you on Eletania, we know the Protheans watched us. Maybe they did more than watch."

"Mmm." Shepard acknowledged the theory through a mouthful of toothpaste. He couldn't think of an intelligent contribution to make, so he simply finished washing up and went to get dressed, enjoying the comfortable silence.

* * *

"Uh, hi." Shepard looked up from under bashfully lowered brows and spoke the words sheepishly, making him, did he but know it, adorable in the eyes of the woman he spoke to. Liara stood to one side on the threshold of the woman's home and appraised her: she was one of the tallest human women Liara had ever seen, overtopping her and Shepard (who were much of a height) by about half a head. She was lean, had warm brown eyes to Shepard's blue, and her black hair was liberally threaded with grey. The one feature she really had in common with her nephew was their skin tone: so pale it was almost pearlescent.

"Hi yourself," she finally said when it became clear that Shepard was momentarily tongue-tied. When he failed to return _that_ serve she spoke more to fill the silence: "You know, you look a lot like a fellow I saw on the news — Commander Shepard, his name was. I remember, 'cause it had me thinking: my sister, now, she married a fellow named Shepard, and I did hear that they had a son who'd be about the age of this Commander fellow, but of course I wouldn't know anything about that now."

By the time she'd finished, Shepard was grinning boyishly, and had found his voice. "How are you doing, Aunt Kathie?"

"How am I doing, he asks. Well, now, since it's been a little while, you'd better come in and sit down while I catch you up on the news." Shepard and Liara stepped over the threshold, and Aunt Kathie called out "Liam! You'll never guess who's here!"

From rather closer at hand than the volume of his wife's call would have suggested, a wry baritone made itself heard, announcing William's presence before he turned the corner and presented himself to view; "With you prattling on at the top of your lungs and not letting him get a word in edgewise, I think I could take a shrewd guess. How are you, there, lad?"

Shepard nodded to his uncle. William was shorter than his wife, but still had an inch or two's advantage over his visitors, and that not counting his vivid shock of red hair. "Uncle Will," he acknowledged the salutation, and looked briefly at Liara before continuing with the formalities: "Liara, this is my mother's sister Kathleen, and her husband William Keogh. Aunt Kathie, Uncle Will, this is Liara T'Soni."

"Lovely to meet you, my dear!" Aunt Kathie launched herself arms-first at an only mildly startled Liara, enfolding her in a capacious embrace and planting kisses on both her cheeks. "I think we've seen you on the news vids as well, haven't we, Liam?" Without waiting for her husband to reply, she made a sudden thoughtful expression, and went on: "Now, I do recall reading that some a… that some _people_ from, erm, elsewhere can't take human food or drink… Are you…?" Liara barely managed to start shaking her head before Aunt Kathie resumed her sunny expression and went on. "Ah, that's grand! We can all have a nice cup of tea! Come on through!"

Shepard and Liara exchanged a wry look, recalling everything he'd tried to share with her to prepare her for the Aunt Kathie Experience, then looked up and were forced to grin sheepishly as they realised that Uncle Will shared it.

As Aunt Kathie filled and set the kettle boiling, thought for a moment and went rooting through the cupboards for the good china, she kept up a running flood of questions that would not wait for an answer, and sundry other commentary: "And how long will you be staying? Do you need Liam to make you up the guest room? I warn you, you'll never be forgiven if you take yourself off again without seeing your cousin Maire: sixteen she is — as well you should know! — and after me for the same thing you were at that age, wanting to go off to England of all places and train for a soldier. Honestly, sometimes I wish I'd never told her Commander Shepard was her cousin Phil: maybe she'd wait and finish school first, but she wants to go be just like you. I don't know…"

Shepard took advantage of the necessary pause as Aunt Kathie peered into the teapot, winced and went to rinse it out. "Speaking of," he introduced his theme loosely, "I think I owe you an apology, don't I?"

"Sure, and what for, child?" Aunt Kathie asked without looking 'round.

"For the fact that you haven't seen me in over twelve years," Shepard  
said quietly. "For what I said when you did."

For a long moment Aunt Kathie was silent, pinching tea leaves out of the tin and dropping them into the pot with jerky neglectful movements. She drew a breath sharply in through her nose, as audibly swallowed, and turned to face her nephew, her eyes only faintly moist.

"It was only true what you said; it _is_ a stranger I was to you… and you had something you felt you had to do."

Shepard smiled gently: "It may have been true, but it wasn't kind. I'm sorry, Aunt Kathie."

For a moment, it wasn't clear if she was about to weep, smile, grimace, hug him or box him on the ear. Finally it turned out to be none of the above: she snorted and smiled lopsidedly at him.

"Sure, and I thought you'd be back inside of a month or two anyway. You were skinny as a rake back then, and your big blue eyes the size of soup plates." She looked him in the eye and spoke simply: "When you stuck with it, I was proud of you."

All present took refuge for a moment in the low-key ritual of tea-drinking, perched on stools or otherwise leaning on the breakfast bar. Shepard paid particular attention to Liara's face as she brought the cup to her lips: they could both remember him drinking tea and not entirely hating it, but how it would strike Liara's taste buds was a question neither of their memories could answer. She had, of course, been raised to a matriarch's exacting standards as regarded the social proprieties, so Shepard received no clues: her face was impassive. He kept looking at it anyway, as it was fast becoming one of his favourite hobbies. He let his lips spread into a goofy grin, drank in the sight of her for a beat longer, then took a sip of his own tea. His eyes met Aunt Kathie's, and the smile in hers made it clear she had missed none of the by-play. He grinned at her, as good as admitting that he'd brought someone home to meet his family. Wordlessly, she took it happily on board, and changed the subject.

"You've picked the right time to come, anyway: Donal and Shivvy are both home for Christmas. They'll be home in a bit… and thinking about it, you'll see Declan as well if you wait a couple of hours. We're babysitting the little one so he and Sarah can have a 'date night', if you ever did." She pronounced the phrase as though it were from a foreign language she'd only taken a year of in school, then cocked her head on one side and made a suggestion uncertainly: "Would you ever let me call your cousins? Since you've come while they're all on the plane, it'd be a shame if you missed any of them."

Uncle Will had leaned forward, his mouth half open to try and save his nephew from being swamped with relatives, or indeed to point out that Shepard and Liara might be staying long enough to catch up with his cousins one at a time, but he was forestalled. Shepard raised a hand, and Liam was impressed to find himself abandoning all thought of speaking. _My nephew the space captain…_

"Go ahead, Aunt Kathie. That's what we came for."

* * *

"Will you two put your eyes back in your heads?" Aunt Kathie's tone was no more than mock-scandalised, and the laughter of their brothers and sister was good-natured, but Siobhan and Maire went roughly the colour of beetroot anyway. The family sat in a cramped circle in the living room, eyes generally turned towards Shepard and Liara on one of the two-person settees, but the two youngest girls had appropriated the couch opposite, the better to pursue their self-appointed roles as the respective shadows of the variously exotic visitors. Maire was staring at her cousin with the hero-worshipping attitude Aunt Kathie had warned him about, but Siobhan, it seemed, had eyes only for Liara. Shepard smiled fondly as he saw a sympathetic tinge of violet suffuse her cheekbones as she watched Siobhan look away in minor mortification.

Aunt Kathie gently twisted the motherly knife: "Pay her no mind, dear. We don't see many asari here."

"No?" Liara enquired with mild surprise. "So far from the Alliance, I'd have thought your trading partners…" She tailed off as the Keoghs exchanged looks. They silently elected Patrick to explain in what he liked to think was an authoritative tone:

"Watson is an old colony," he told her. "After first contact, we made a few painful mistakes before we knew what's what out here in the Terminus, so we still rely on our trade links with the colonies nearer home. There are some newer colonies on the nearer side of the Traverse that rely on our trade, so the Navy," he nodded to his cousin, who smiled gently, "keeps our lines secure." He grinned as a thought occurred to him, and exaggerated his accent: "Besides, there's a lot of Irish here, so we have to secure our corned beef and cabbage supplies, so we do!"

Siobhan, at least, was quick to notice that the eye-rolling chuckle that was Liara's contribution to the general merriment was the exact mirror of Shepard's, she had clearly needed no explanations to understand Patrick's deliberate invocation of stereotypes. Siobhan reflected on what she'd learned about the asari in school, and her eyes grew even wider.

Aunt Kathie, for her part, had thrown her head back and fairly screeched "Go on with you! Corned beef and cabbage, he says!" As the general merriment died down, a tangential thought occurred to her: "Did you bring your uniform, child?"

Shepard let his brows knit together quizzically: "Erm, no… I mean…" he paused and glanced at Liara as something occurred to him: "we both brought armour, but…" he paused as he realised it shouldn't have occurred to him in the first place; "…it's not even Alliance issue, so…"

"You brought _armour_?" Aunt Kathie expostulated, briefly sidetracked.

Shepard nodded sheepishly. "This _is_ the Terminus…" he raised a hand in Patrick's direction. "I know you've been here long enough that Watson itself is pretty safe, but can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if something went down and the first human Spectre didn't have the equipment to get involved?"

Uncle Will, at least, smiled a wry appreciation of the mental image, but Aunt Kathie was back on her theme, and unlikely to be shifted: "If your mother was here she'd want to see her baby boy in his uniform, I'm sure. And so do I!"

Shepard and Liara exchanged a glance: "Everyone's here," he pointed out to her. "I think that's our cue." He turned back to Aunt Kathie: "You'll get the chance," he told her as he and Liara produced a stack of five substantial envelopes each from an inner pocket and began to pass them out.

"Sure, and what's this, child?" Aunt Kathie asked as she read the hand-calligraphed "Mr. and Mrs. William and Kathleen Keogh" on the heavy cream-coloured paper, but she had a suspicion, which was confirmed as she slipped the unsealed envelope open and read: "You are cordially invited: Dr. Liara T'Soni and Lt. Cmdr. Philip Shepard request the pleasure of your company…" Aunt Kathie threw her head back and screeched again.

When her eyes tracked back down, she beheld Shepard and Liara with one arm around each other's waists, so candidly affianced that she wondered that she hadn't suspected before. her eyes shone as she looked from side to side, and read over the shoulders of her sons: "Mr. and Mrs. William and Erica Keogh," "Father Aidan Keogh"; her nephew had remembered every one of his cousins' marriages, ordinations and life events with perfect accuracy, she was sure. "Oh, child… oh, child…" she kept repeating, overcome.

The revelation naturally divided the room into groups: Aunt Kathie, Roisin, Maire and Siobhan descended on Liara to bewilder her with bride-to-be cooing, the menfolk recoiled, and Shepard took advantage of the confusion to excuse himself in the direction of the washroom. When he came out, he found Uncle Will waiting for him.

"Congratulations, lad. She seems like a lovely girl."

Shepard grinned and let his eyes do the lighting-up thing as he contemplated the future waiting for him at the end of his aunt and uncle's downstairs hallway. "You have no idea."

Liam smiled and shook his head, but then the clouds drew together across his expression: "I wanted to catch you alone," he told his nephew, pausing to gather his words. "I just… thank you, for the loan I mean, and for helping out with tuition and all… I feel bad… I mean, practically the only time you ever hear from us is when…"

"Well, that's my fault, isn't it?" Shepard grinned as he interrupted his uncle's pause, drawing a quizzical look. "If I'd come visit more often…"

Liam grinned back, and turned, half passing his nephew and placing a hand on his shoulder by way of escort back to the gathering. Or so Shepard thought: in fact, as soon became clear, Uncle Will was leading him to another room. "You'll have a word alone with Maire?" he asked, and Shepard nodded gladly as he realised that the room was one of the smaller bedrooms, no doubt the one Maire and Siobhan had shared, and still did when Siobhan was home from college.

Maire stood and looked shyly up at her cousin as Uncle will boosted him over the threshold with an affectionate pat on the shoulder. He was forcibly reminded of Aunt Kathie's remarks vis-à-vis eyes, soup plates, and the size comparability thereof: Maire looked slight at first glance, standing at about 5′4″, but a closer look revealed that she was more sturdily built than a look focusing solely on her pale, delicate features might suggest. Shepard had enough of the same genes to know first-hand that her pale skin didn't necessarily mean she was an exclusively indoor sort — people related to her mother or his in general simply did. Not. Tan. But still, he thought, his blue eyes looking into hers, she was… very young.

He grinned at her and held his arms out. "Hi, coz." She grinned back as they hugged.

"So, Aunt Kathie tells me you're thinking about signing up with the Alliance?"

"I want to finish high school at AFC just like you did!"

Shepard gave her a searching look, as he tried to figure out how far "like you did meant "because you did." "Well, you could do worse," he finally said mildly. "How are your grades?"

"Straight A's," she told him with an embarrassed grin. He smiled back.

"Then maybe you should think about going to Welbeck. I don't want to run my old school down, but the teaching's definitely more geared to high achievers than at AFC. And it would put you in a great position to apply to the Academy, if that's what you want to do."

Shepard resisted the urge to sigh as Maire's eyes narrowed in suspicion: "How come you didn't do that?" She asked.

"'Cause I wasn't as smart as my big sister," he told her mildly, and grinned as she started. He explained:

"Your cousin Jen was army mad from the age of… I don't know," he abruptly realised, "say about ten? She started drilling with the colonial militia on her eighteenth birthday, and she was headed to the Academy, except, well… the raid happened." Maire shifted uncomfortably as her cousin visibly made an effort not to remember the Mindoir raid. He went on:

"Look, my advice, for what it's worth? Take your time." He grinned as a thought occurred to him: "I was nearly seventeen when I joined up, so you can still do that and be just like me!" Maire rolled her eyes. "When you come to the Citadel I'll introduce you to some friends of mine: some are Navy, some are Marines… I probably know people who joined the service in every possible way, so you can ask them all about it and work out what's best for you, OK?"

"OK." Maire couldn't help returning her cousin's broad charming smile as they went to reinforce Liara in her defence against the remorseless welcome she was receiving to the family.


	2. Meditations on a Monkey Suit

**Meditations on a Monkey Suit**

(Note: this is a "deleted scene" of sorts from Chapter 12 of The Anti-Agathics War)

Shepard's eyes opened as he awoke naturally, and then the first thing he chose to do, after the disorientation had worn off, was close them again and sigh over the fact that he was waking up alone. _Can the galaxy look after itself so I can go home, please?_ It was an unfair question in a lot of ways, but it crossed his mind anyway.

He got up, stretching stiff joints and grimacing, and looked out of the hotel room window over the estuary of the River Exe. A pleasant enough view, he had to admit: the next time ceremonial duties brought him back here, he resolved to bring Liara and the girls along to enjoy it.

After showering and attending to necessary duties in the bathroom, he forced himself to walk properly, powering his knees through their morning stiffness and out the other side. He picked up his omni-tool and cancelled the alarm he'd ended up anticipating, and with the half an hour or so he had in hand, he sat on the edge of the bed and eyed his uniform contemplatively rather than rushing to put it on.

It was laid out neatly on a valet stand: Shepard had been worried that his hosts might insist on providing him with a steward or something, but apparently he'd been reading too much historical fiction: British officers didn't have those any more.

It was a new uniform, which was just as well, he had to admit: after fifty years out of harness, and getting increasingly enthusiastic about cookery, fitting into his old one would not have been an option even if protocol had allowed it. Fortunately contacts had directed him to a tiny hole-in-the-wall shop on the 56th floor of a tower in Shalta Ward, where a sympathetic and Savile-Row-level talented tailor had done magic to flatter and minimise his thickening middle, and had promised to run him up a set of Alliance blues on the same lines, in case he found himself needing them.

He stood and started to put the uniform on, pausing as he reached the tunic, and smiling a little as he examined the insignia. He had driven his staff to baroque extents of diplomatic phraseology fending off offers of honorary commissions and excessive post-retirement promotion, and they'd really done a superb job of translating his grumbles of "You can't make an admiral out of someone who's never commanded anything bigger than a frigate!" and "If I took commissions in every army or navy that offered me one, I'd have to sleep in the wardrobe and keep my uniforms in the bedroom!" This particular honorary appointment was different, though: accepting it was likely to cause an uptick in the number of offers again. _I really don't pay you guys enough,_ he thought in the general direction of the Citadel.

Sometimes Shepard suspected that the enemy that armed forces spent the most of their time fighting was change. The nations of Earth maintained armies and at least token navies, even though seagoing vessels were pretty much the preserve of hobbyists and niche-exploiters, but many nations had transferred regiments, commands and especially air forces to the control of the Alliance, with hard-fought bureaucratic battles over who would pay for what, what bases and facilities would be handed over along with the organisations, and who would get promoted, transferred, retained or eased out in the process. The Royal Marines had shown that they were almost as formidable in this kind of political warfare as in the field, but their time had finally come.

Shepard had had half his military training in England, albeit at Alliance facilities, so out of idle curiosity he'd followed the course of the struggle in the official paperwork, but nothing more would have come of it, at least as far as concerned him, if a similar rearguard action against change hadn't been being fought within the Alliance Marine Corps at the same time: Shepard's own former unit, the Pegasus Brigade, was being dragged kicking and screaming into admitting that fast-flyby orbital insertions by unsupported infantry were very little more than a showy and expensive way to get Marines killed. Shepard himself had had a fairly spectacular share of proving that on Akuze, and to its credit the Alliance had responded promptly, replacing the old Grizzly armoured vehicles with drop-capable Makoes so that troops jumping in might at least have some extra firepower, but once humanity met the other races out there and got to know just how sophisticated their detection and early-warning systems really were, it quickly became apparent that orbital drop tactics as they'd originally been envisioned were not something a responsible general ought to employ outside very unusual circumstances. Still, for sixty years the Brigade had hung on in the Table of Organisation, principally because the Light Infantry part of the Orbital Insertion/Light Infantry course made them the equivalent of elite paratroopers, able to take the pressure off constantly overstretched spec-ops groups, for their more conventional missions at least. However, the time had finally come to scale drop training back radically, if not leave it as entirely the preserve of N7s and other jumpin' fools. Some bright spark in the Alliance Defence Secretary's office had spotted both changes in the offing, and said "Hey, you know who else are élite, nay, commando-trained troops?" It was at this point that Shepard had made his interest known.

Once that had happened, the government of the UK had been embarrassingly eager to have him as a high-profile and influential patron: they'd offered to commission him as the equivalent of a field marshal and make him 'captain-general' — honorary C.O. of the whole shooting match — but fortunately the Alliance had squelched that one before his staff could get started re-phrasing his immediate reaction: it turned out they weren't thrilled about giving even honorary rank senior to every other officer in the Corps to a man who, when last he'd served on active duty as a Marine, as opposed to a naval officer, had been a corporal… A corporal who got every last member of his squad killed… and then came within an ace of being medically retired…

After a three-cornered negotiation between his office, the Alliance brass, and the Brits, things had finally shaken themselves out: the battle honours of the Royal Marines Commandoes would be kept alive by the newly-formed Alliance Marine Commandoes; the Pegasus Brigade would become the Pegasus Corps — a conveniently non-specific term that could cover any number of Marines, however small — and Shepard would accept another spurious post-retirement promotion and become Colonel-Commandant — i.e., honorary C.O. — of the Pegasus Corps within the Commandoes. It was an arrangement Shepard was modestly pleased with, as it kept everybody happy: the British government could keep appointing those of its citizens who volunteered for the Commandoes as Royal Marines, without putting itself to the expense of training them; the Alliance would get an influx of élite troops already trained to, and past, Marine standards, and his fellow OI/LI-trained boys and girls could pride themselves on being the élite of the élite, wearing their beloved maroon berets in amongst the green under the honorary leadership of The Oiliest Boy of Them All, Shepard thought mordantly — the nickname 'Oily Boys' had followed the official abbreviation of Orbital Insertion/Light Infantry as surely as night followed day.

Even the British Army was happy, Shepard remembered: the name and insignia of Pegasus bore witness to the fact that Britain had won one of the very early political skirmishes, as Earth's governments vied for prestige and influence over the ethos of the Alliance service, but most governments had since found such victories to be white elephants: the Parachute Regiment still existed, and would be glad of the extra training space as the Pegasus Corps moved from Aldershot here, to what would now be called Commando Training Centre, Alliance Marines, Lympstone.

Shepard shook himself free of all this woolgathering, and shrugged his way into the navy-blue tunic, fastening its high collar and lifting his chin as he strove to settle his head comfortably over the crimson gorget patches: the Prince of Wales was staying on as Captain-General, RM, although the Alliance, as a supra-national organisation, had declined to create an extra-high rank just for him, and so the days ceremonies called for the very fanciest possible dress, which for a colonel-commandant was very fancy indeed, he thought only a little sourly as he wrapped the gold-and-crimson silk sash around his waist and fixed spurs to the heels of his high boots, which were mercifully covered by the overalls, which were themselves mercifully covered by the tunic, so the overall visual effect was actually very similar to the sensible black shoes and side-piped trousers of the equivalent Alliance uniform.

He looked left and right, pressing his chin uncomfortably against the tunic's high collar as he checked that the gold shoulder cords that, among other things, distinguished a colonel-commandant from a run-of-the-mill colonel were straight, and found himself grinning. Like most Alliance Marines, he'd witnessed epic levels of bitching on the part of colonels from Earth or colonial military forces on attachment to Alliance units, complaining about being 'demoted' because the equivalent alliance rank was — Major. For Shepard it was even worse: on the one hand, he'd last seen active duty as a naval C.O., so arguably now that he was a four-striper his Alliance rank was Captain, but now that he was on the Table of Organisation as a Marine, arguably that made him a Major: Major (or possibly Captain) Colonel-Commandant Shepard. And of course, as far as most of the public was concerned he would always be 'Commander Shepard', which was why he hadn't let them bump him past Staff Commander when he retired in the first place.

He looked at himself in the mirror as he settled the red-and-white peaked cap onto his head: the occasion was much too fancy for a beret, maroon or otherwise, but there was a tradition-hallowed place for his drop wings on the right sleeve. Most importantly, there were no ribands, stars or garters, or supererogatory bits of jewellery hung around his neck. He had insisted, through his staff, that as Councillor for humanity he couldn't accept marks of favour from any individual government, so the medals on his breast were all his own: earned, not won, in the field as the smattering of red Wound Devices — 'hard-way stars' as they were colloquially known — pinned to the ribbons bore eloquent witness: rumours that Wound Devices on medals awarded posthumously were referred to as ' _really_ -hard-way stars' were… completely true.

To add the final touches, he hung his sword from the belt-frog concealed under the tails of his sash, and pulled on his white cotton gloves. A thought suddenly occurred to him: he didn't expect to be parading with drawn sword, but just in case, he drew the sword and practised saluting with it, sweeping it up before his face and back down to his side in front of the mirror. Alliance service had no sword tradition even for ceremonial purposes, so he still had to get comfortable with the drill. On that note, he sheathed the sword again and started practising the palm-forward hand salute of the Royal Marines. _If I am under surveillance, I might as well give 'em a laugh,_ he thought as he muttered: "longest way up, shortest way down. Longest way up, shortest way dow…"

A knock at the door made him freeze self-consciously and eventually remember to drop his arm. He opened it to reveal a subaltern labouring under the weight of an enormous aiguillette. He tried not to grin at the relieved expression on the man's face as he braced to attention, seeing that The Colonel-Commandant was in uniform already.

"Good morning, sir. Are you ready?" Shepard gave him 8/10 for hiding his anxiety at the prospect of hearing any answer to that other than 'yes'. He tucked his hat under his arm and steeled himself for a full day of ceremonial.

"Lead the way, lieutenant," he told him, remembering at the last moment to pronounce it the British way.


	3. To Add Something New

**To Add Something New to this Wonderful Year**

 **Note:** This chapter takes place in December 2183, about six weeks after the Battle of the Citadel (i.e. between the first two games in the trilogy)

"Ten-HUT!"

Spinal reflex, engrained from the age of sixteen up, jammed Shepard's heels together before he could do anything , but then he remembered that he wasn't an enlisted man any more, so he could probably get away with looking 'round to see what was going on. In fact, as the senior officer in their group it was arguably his duty to. From the parade-ground snap in Ashley's voice, something serious was clearly up.

From the sheer weight of gold braid and bullion on the shoulders of the officer who'd just entered the room, there was only one person it could possibly be. Shepard turned to face him and raised his hand to the band of his beret with all the snap that Ashley… was doing right next to him, in deference to flag rank.

"As you were, commander, chief." A very familiar voice acknowledged them both as Admiral Hackett returned their salute, then his face broke into a grin. "We finally meet in person, Commander Shepard."

Shepard returned the smile with interest. "Yes, sir. And congratulations on your promotion, admiral."

"Thank you, commander." The newly promoted commander of the entire Alliance military acknowledged coolly. "Although really I should be congratulating you. On multiple counts."

"Sir?"

"Well, for one thing, you're getting married. Or had you forgotten?" Shepard and Ashley gave the obligatory smiles owing to an Admiral's Joke, but then Hackett's face turned serious: "Incidentally, I will be able to be there, and I wanted to thank you for the invitation: I'm only sorry I couldn't respond before. I wasn't sure if I'd be on the Citadel."

"I understand, admiral. I was busy enough just taking command of the _Normandy_ , let alone the whole fleet."

A Lieutenant-Commander's Joke barely rated a smile, but Hackett was a generous man; his voice was light-hearted as he went on: "More importantly: congratulations, you're not going to be court-martialled!"

Shepard's "Thank you, sir," on the other hand, was entirely solemn.

"Thank yourself," Hackett told him gruffly. "Or thank the timing: Parliament passed the statutory instrument confirming your Spectre immunity two days before you shipped out to Ilos. We could still take the _Normandy_ away from you administratively, but…" The admiral gave a queer little grimace. "…the decision was made not to."

Shepard nodded. Passive voice or no passive voice, it hardly took a genius to realise that the Admiral of the Fleet would have a certain influence over any such decision. "I understand, sir."

They were grateful ot be interrupted in the midst of all the things they weren't saying by the sound of the door opening. All three of them made uncertain movements of their feet that approximated coming to attention: Anderson was a Councillor now, and the protocolists hadn't quite decided what military honours were due to such a person, so, bereft of tradition, they simply showed their respect.

Anderson nodded to them. "Good, you're all here. Shepard, I take it the admiral has given you the good news?"

"Yes, sir: no court-martial." A thought occurred to him, and his brow furrowed. "Uh, I guess the Alliance would never have let you be named Councillor if… but are you…?"

"…going to be punished for abetting a mutiny and assaulting an ambassador?" Anderson completed Shepard's incoherent thought with a smile. "No."

"We ultimately decided that if we can't punish you, commander, we can't punish anyone," Hackett put in. Shepard nodded, and Anderson continued:

"Admiral Kapoor did make it clear to me that the fact that I was retiring helped. Thanks to you I have a new job to take up." Anderson's tone was ambivalent, and his look pensive as he cast his eyes around what had been Udina's office, and was now his.

"That did occur to me, sir," Shepard admitted, and then a mortified look passed briefly over his face. "Uh, that's not the only reason I…" He tailed off again.

"Of course not," Anderson smiled. "Anyway, we've established that nobody's going to be punished, so it's time to talk about the rewards we're all getting. Do you have your candidates picked out?"

He looked at Hackett first, and the admiral nodded, keying his omni-tool to transfer information to Anderson's computer. Anderson reviewed it, and raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to take part yourself, admiral?"

Hackett shook his head, looking down at the front of his tunic. "Been there, done that, got the fruit salad," he growled enigmatically. Anderson nodded, and turned to Shepard, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm not necessarily in the same league as the admiral, but I agree." Shepard told him, nodding respectfully to Hackett. "Unfortunately I only had time to talk to Wrex, and he wasn't interested." He turned from Hackett on his left to Ashley on his right, and grinned. "Fortunately, there's one candidate I can _order_ to take part!"

Ash looked from man to man in confusion. "What? Why are you looking at me like that, sir?" She asked with all the wariness of a true N.C.O. when officers are being too clever.

Shepard grinned. "The Alliance is bringing in a new campaign medal, chief, for service with the Citadel Fleet. The Council is going to award the first four personally, and Councillor Anderson asked us here to pick candidates to receive them, from Fifth Fleet, and from the crew of the _Normandy_."

Ash nodded comprehension as he explained, then blinked: "Me?" She asked elliptically, still looking from one officer to another. "All I did was work my damage control station."

Shepard cast a brief look of his own at Hackett and Anderson, in case either of them wanted to field that one. "It's a campaign medal, chief," he pointed out: "that's all you have to do. Besides," he looked her straight in the eyes and went on in a low voice, "I want to raise your profile a bit: anyone you serve with in the future should be as proud as I've been… or people who serve with anyone from the Williams family, for that matter."

It took every ounce of Ashley's training to keep her from reacting visibly to that little one-two punch, although she so far forgot herself as to let slip a heartfelt "Oh, skipper!" Her lips tightened and she looked away as the full weight of his words sank in: he wanted to help rehabilitate her grandfather's memory… _He_ wanted to help rehabilitate her grandfather's memory. _And he's got a great ass… but that's not important right now… or, since he's marrying Liara, ever. Dammit, skipper, why did you have to ambush me like this?_ Outwardly, she just nodded.

Obliviously, Shepard turned back to Anderson. "That's one," he said brightly, then turned to Hackett. "Uh, how many candidates do you have, sir?"

"Two."

Shepard nodded. "Glad to hear it: I was planning on putting forward one from the ship's crew and one from the shore party. And since Wrex has said No, that only leaves one."

Anderson, whose memory of digging Shepard and his comrades out of the wreckage of the Council Chamber was still fresh, blinked as the denarius descended. "Commander," he warned him, "I'm really not sure the Council will agree to that."

Shepard looked unblinkingly into his old captain's eyes this time. "Sir, I'd appreciate it if you'd do your best to persuade them. I think it's important that the public know exactly who we owe our lives to."

* * *

"Tali!" Shepard exclaimed as the elevator doors opened and he saw her emerging from the airlock tunnel. "That's good timing: I was just looking for you." His surprise was ratcheted up a notch when he saw that she was carrying a backpack. As lightly as quarians tended to travel, it was the most he'd ever seen her burdened with. "You change your mind about the hotel?" He asked.

"No… I mean, yes, I am checking into the hotel, but… I met up with another quarian… she's taking a ship back to the Flotilla as a Pilgrimage gift, and… I've signed on for the voyage."

Shepard smiled faintly: Tali was racing from pause to pause exactly the way she darted between cover in combat, but the smile soon faded: "It's that time, huh?" His voice was husky. "When do you ship out?"

Tali hung her head and her answer was barely audible: "Next week."

Shepard unknowingly twisted the knife by making no effort to hide the pained look on his face: "You can't stay for the wedding?"

Tali's voice held a pleading note: "I'm sorry, Shepard: I don't know when I'll get another chance to get back to the Migrant Fleet… and now that I have the data from Solcrum…"

Shepard had been ready to protest—that he would miss her, that he would gladly take her back to her people on the _Normandy_ …—but he could hear that she was begging to be understood. "OK," he told her gently, and by an instinctive mercy looked away from her faceplate, turning his glance to her backpack. "Anyway," he told her briskly and brightly, "there's a couple of things you've forgotten," he went on, grinning mischievously. "Wait here a minute?" Tali's head made an indeterminate move between a nod and a head-shake, as deference to her captain warred with confusion, but before she could pick one he had disappeared into the airlock.

It was more like five minutes before Shepard returned, but when Tali saw what he was carrying, she reflected that with the speed of the _Normandy_ 's main elevator—or lack thereof—he couldn't have done much better.

"Shepard," she remonstrated as she saw what he was carrying, "that's Colossus armour! I can't…"

"Tali," he told her with laughter in his voice, "it's _quarian_ Colossus armour. I bought it for you! What else am I going to do with it?" He held it out to her: the fact he could do it one-handed, by the comfortable carry-handle it sported in its compact transportable form, that explained and justified the hefty price-tag Kassa put on it all on its own. Tali accepted it mechanically, and turned her attention to the box under his arm, only to be swiftly boggled as she recognised _karriek_ slate, a material that had only ever been produced on Rannoch as far as she knew.

It wasn't always easy to tell where Tali was looking, but in the circumstances Shepard managed to put two and two together. He whipped the two-hundred-year-old presentation case out from under his arm so casually that Tali's eyes widened and she resisted the convulsive urge to reach out and make him take it easy. "I got you a little something as well. I was going to give it to you later, but…" The cool white material of the lid was so well-fitted that it parted silently from the rest of the case as he lifted it, and showed her what was inside.

Lying in specially-formed recesses of velvet-like cloth, separate curved strips of golden-coloured polymer, jointed to fit around the neck-piece and upper chest… not even of an environment suit, Tali realised: from its age, it would have to be a piece of a pre-Migration formal military hardsuit.

"Oh, Shepard! This is… Where did you find…?" Her voice turned apologetic. "Shepard, I can't take this. It's an award gorget… you have to have been given one of only five decorations by the Admiralty Board to wear it… and some of them haven't been awarded in centuri… What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

* * *

A work gang had been taken from the vital rebuilding tasks that seemed to be multiplying on the list, and had spent an afternoon throwing up an elevated stand and some seating at the feet of the Krogan Monument on the Presidium. Some had questioned the wisdom of this move, but Councillor Sparatus in particular had insisted. He and his colleagues stood on the raised platform and he now stepped forward and let his rolling turian baritone reach out to the audience without benefit or need of amplification, though there were several audio and video pickups carrying his words across Council Space.

"For over a millennium, the peace and security of the alliance between the Citadel peoples has depended on the willingness of individuals to step forward, to stand their posts alongside their comrades, and defend Council Space with the Citadel fleets. As we welcome humanity as the newest Council race,"—he looked briefly to his left, and exchanged nods with Anderson—"it is only fitting that we recognise the service and the sacrifice of Fifth Fleet in the Battle of the Citadel, and provide ourselves with the means of acknowledging that service in the future, as vessels of the Systems Alliance take their places in the Council's peacekeeping forces, and the Citadel Fleet itself."

Sparatus paused, and cut his eyes left again, almost turning all the way around as he exchanged nods with Tevos this time: "It was our asari comrades who inaugurated the tradition we are here today to continue: asari warriors who have stood in defence of the Citadel are to this day entitled to carry a blue shield on formal parade. This tradition has been copied and adapted by the other Citadel peoples, and now the Systems Alliance, in consultation with this Council, has authorised the award of a new medal." He held up the presentation case in his hands, and a camera remote focused on it so that at least those watching on the 'net could get a decent look at the bronze shield-shaped medal and its blue ribbon. "This medal will be borne by all humans who stand their posts in defence of the Citadel, and of the peace this Council strives always to preserve, and it is our honour and privilege to present the first four of them today."

Sparatus paused and looked out at the first row of seats in front of the dais. "Ms. Leanne Zhang-Carradine," he called out loudly and clearly, then locked eyes with her and dropped his voice so that it was gentle, and no louder than it needed to be: "Will you step forward, please?

"Service Chief Shannon Zhang-Carradine, Systems Alliance Marine Corps, was a platoon sergeant in the Marine detachment aboard the cruiser _Emden_ , and when _Emden_ placed itself between the geth fleet and the _Destiny Ascension_ , saving the flagship of the Citadel Fleet, and the lives of myself, Councillors Tevos and Valern, and our staffs, as well as the crew of the _Ascension_ at the price of its own destruction, and the lives of ever member of her crew, Service Chief Zhang-Carradine stood her post to the last."

By now Leanne was standing in front of Sparatus, and in any other context the sight would have been comic. Even from the audience's point of view below them she seemed to be about half the height of the turian Councillor, and her fine-boned body seemed to sway in a non-existent breeze as Sparatus' words rehearsed her grief for time number infinity-plus-one. Sparatus made an inchoate gesture with his free hand, unsure whether to offer his support, but Leanne mastered herself and looked up at him with a steady gaze, through the tears that stood in her eyes. Sparatus held out the medal in its case and pitched his words to show that it was only by her that he cared to be heard:

"The debt we owe you can never be repaid. I can only acknowledge it."

Leanne closed her eyes on her grief for a moment, then looked back into Sparatus' eyes and forced herself to speak firmly: "Thank you." Sparatus nodded and stepped back into the line of Councillors as Leanne returned to her seat.

Tevos walked forward, waited for the cameras to focus on her, and for Leanne to get halfway down the stairs, then spoke: "Boatswain's Mate Third Class Hector Killian, step forward."

An impossibly young-looking man in largely unadorned Alliance blues stood and made his way briskly up to the stand as Tevos introduced him: "Serviceman Killian joined the crew of the dreadnought _Fuji_ , flagship of Fifth Fleet for his first space deployment, on the 7th of October of this year, one week before the Battle of the Citadel." By this time Killian had reached her, and in the last couple of days the protocol had been decided on: Councillors _did_ get a salute from service members wearing their covers. Tevos acknowledged it with a nod, and went on speaking as she pinned the medal to Killian's shirt: "When the _Fuji_ went into action in defence of the Citadel, Serviceman Killian and his shipmates stood their posts."

Tevos stepped back, and smiled impishly at the wide-eyed stare she was getting from the young man; she yielded to impulse, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. The blush that spread over Killian's face provoked a good-natured titter from the crowd, as did the fact that Tevos practically had to grab him by the shoulders to turn him around and show it to them.

Tevos retired to the line and Anderson stepped up. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, step forward." Ashley's tread was more measured than Killian's, but equally brisk as she ascended the dais to stand and salute the man who had briefly been her captain, as he introduced her: "Chief Williams is sergeant-major of the Marine detachment aboard the frigate _Normandy_. It was the _Normandy_ that brought the news of the attack on the Citadel to Arcturus Station. It was the _Normandy_ that came to the defence of the Citadel at the head of Fifth Fleet, and when the _Normandy_ struck the blow that destroyed the flagship of the geth fleet"—he paused to pin the medal to Ashley's tunic—"Sergeant-Major Williams stood her post."

"Thank you, sir," Ash whispered. Anderson nodded, and she executed a smart about-face and tried not to feel like a total impostor as she marched back to her seat. It was the first time anyone besides the skipper had called her 'sergeant-major'. Service Chief Braun, the next most senior Marine on the _Normandy_ , who had, after all, been assigned the job, had assured her that he was fine with it, and so had Joker, who, let's face it, had actually done the fancy flying, and fired the shot that took out Sovereign, but… It wasn't as if she didn't appreciate what the skipper was trying to do for her and for her family's name; it just smelled of… politics.

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, step forward." Ash gave Tali a reassuring nod and smile as they passed each other, and Councillor Valern gave the introduction that days of tense debate and negotiation had settled on:

"This is by no means the first time a quarian has served honourably in defence of the Citadel and Council space: Tali'Zorah was part of the _Normandy_ 's ground team, that fought its way to the Council Chamber, and unlocked the Citadel's mass relays so that Fifth Fleet could come to our aid. Though the quarian Migrant Fleet no longer maintains diplomatic relations with the Citadel," Valern went on as Tali lifted her chin so he could fasten the gorget around her neck. She refastened her hood over it as he continued: "Tali'Zorah's actions amply demonstrate that the quarian people have lost none of their valour."


	4. Dust Thou Art

**Dust Thou Art**

Philip Shepard opened his eyes. He had been forced back to wakefulness by the fact that his face was so choked and caked with concrete dust that he literally couldn't breathe. Even so, it barely seemed worth it: his face and a part of his right arm were all of him that wasn't buried in the rubble of the fallen administration building, and the ruins of the colony all around him were quiet. Quiet as what, he didn't particularly want to pick out a cliché.

As if in recoil from the direction of that particular train of thought, he made a convulsive movement of his free arm. Even as he was doing it he felt regret: it would either finish unburying the thing or wrench his shoulder, and for a sickening moment the odds seemed to favour the latter. Then his elbow came free and he managed to wipe the worst of the dust off his face before tyring to spit out what was still choking him. His mouth was horribly dry, but he managed to clear his airway, just about.

With not much else to do, he nearly let himself sleep again, but a jolt of pain from his left leg brutally kept him in the land of the living. It had started as a wriggle, an instictive attempt to get a little more comfortable in the narrow crevice the fall of the ceiling had left him lying in. Turned out that was a bad idea. Try not to do it again. So. He stayed perfectly still perforce, and let his mind wander.

He remembered the varren. How many times he'd drifted in and out of consciousness since the raid, he couldn't remember, let alone how much actual time it amounted to. One thing he definitely did remember was waking up to find himself looking straight into the bug-eyes of a batarian war-beast. His instincts had told him to freeze — not that he'd had much choice — and he and the varren had just… looked at each other. There was no doubt in his mind but that the beast recognised him — within the limits of its frame of reference anyway: it was a predator and he was helpless, immobilised, therefore prey.

Presently, there had been a rattle of inhuman language and the varren had run off to answer its master's call. By swivelling his eyes, Phil could just see a pair of batarians tramping through the ruins of Town with the varren at their heels. He couldn't imagine what they might be doing if they _weren't_ looking for survivors, to eke out their takings from their slave raid, but if they _were_ , why hadn't the varren alerted them that he was here? It was an imponderable, but that wouldn't stop him from pondering it for more years to come than he knew.

His eyes half closed, but he threw them back up, and for lack of any better kind of exercise to take he started to flail awkwardly around with his free arm, eventually using a bit more diligence as he tested exactly how his range of motion was limited by the fact that his shoulder was still partially buried. Rather than let his mind wander, he paid the closest attention to the sensations in his arm, hand and fingers: _ah, that's the broken edge of that breezeblock, no, I can't quite reach all the way along that crack in it_. Eventually he was through, though, even counting every twinge and graze, and he gave in to the memories: the contrast between the determined set of his mother's jaw and the nervous way her left hand had shifted, trying to get a grip on the unfamiliar forend of her rifle; the worried look his dad had shot back over his shoulder at him and Jen. Mom and Dad had tried to argue, of course, but Jen had picked up a weapon and given a nod to Sarge, who was pointing out at the time that anyone who didn't fight would just get taken, so… And God bless them, they'd tried to at least march in front of their kids if they couldn't keep them out of the battle entirely, but they were just stretched too thin to even form two ranks. In the end, as they'd spread out, Phil had stuck by his big sister, and as the orbital artillery started to hit, they'd lost sight of their parents…

There was nothing in what happened next that Phil's mind didn't want to shy away from: Jen going from feeling, thinking, calling-him-a-dork-but-usually-affectionately-at-least life to nothingness like someone flipped a switch — up on the slaver ship, somebody had done precisely that, a part of his mind pointed out mordantly — the fact that literally nobody he knew was left — his parents, Lizzie, Father Jacques, old man Bertrand… they were all either dead or taken, and there was no way of knowing which — yeah, nowhere in there was there anything he could dwell on and stay sane. Time for another exciting round of 'Count the Rocks!' He suppressed a wild urge to giggle.

"…riously though," an approaching voice gave Phil more than enough to distract himself with. "Rothbard makes chief before you? Sorry, corp, but that's just bullshit."

"Well, I appreciate that, Fairlie…" The second voice was quieter and sounded distracted, but they were definitely getting closer. "But is this really the time? Or the place?"

"Sure, why not? I mean, you _know_ we're too late. Fuck, just look at this place…"

Phil could hear the soldiers' footsteps now, and he tensed, getting ready to get himself noticed. A part of him wondered how many hours — days? — it had been since he last tried to speak. The rest of him yelled 'Wonder later!' inside his head. Even now he felt the sense of embarrassed constraint that is born of having a mother who dislikes… disliked loud noises, and a sister who was apt to demonstrate exactly how Mom would react by making them. He fought it down, made a heroic effort to call out to the soldiers before they could pass by, and… _maybe_ raised a puff of the omnipresent dust. There was no ingrained impediment to waving his arm, on the other hand, and he made it lurch convulsively back and forth. _Look! Look! Oh, please look!_ He thought, and the desperation emboldened him: he actually managed to emit a cracked and raspy "Hey!"

"Holy shit!" It was the second voice, Phil thought. The corporal. After a pause, just long enough for a switched-on intellect to confirm the evidence pouring in over the 'eye' channel, it went on: "Medic! We've got a survivor here! Medic!" They sounded in his ears like — correction: they _were_ — magic words, and an immense wave of relief crashed prematurely over him: he was found; he had done his part; now he could rest a little…

"Whoa, there, buddy! Stay with me, OK?"

 _How dare this person touch me?_ An absurdly intense burst of resentment was Phil's first response to the feeling of a hand on his face, shaking him awake and wiping the worst of the dust off. Then his eyes opened and he responded more proportionately to what was going on: someone with a lean, olive-skinned face and an aquiline nose was bending over him, looking worried yet purposeful, and all in all that was probably for the best.

"Here you go," the medic said, popping the straw from a canteen into Phil's mouth in a businesslike fashion. Later, after a long and eventful career, full of friends and _Gemütlichkeit_ , as well as drama and explosions, he would look back and remember those few mouthfuls of water among the top three drinks he'd ever taken.

"My name's Leon," the medic told him, snapping a band onto his conveniently accessible wrist, then taking the straw away before he could drink too much. "What's yours?"

"Phil." He surprised himself by getting the monosyllable out pretty loud and clear now he'd wet his whistle.

Leon looked back at his omnitool, clenched his jaw, and shook his head. "O.K., Phil, we have engineers coming to dig you out of here, but…" He paused, sighed, and went on: "…I'm not going to bullshit you; we really need to get you stabilised, like, now." He paused again, his eyes tracking arbitrarily as he visibly weighed pros and cons. "How much room to move do you have under there?"

"S'heavy on my chest, but I can breathe," Phil rasped. It was remarkable how fast his throat had dried again… Leon nodded, and he went on: "My left leg is trapped: something… the _edge_ of something is pressing on it." Leon looked: later Phil would be shown the metre-thick concrete support column that the batarian artillery had managed to shift. It was safe to say his leg wasn't supporting the _entire_ weight of the thing. At the moment. After some experimental wriggling, he added: "My right leg's actually pretty free."

Leon, by this point, had pushed back the remains of a sleeve from Phil's forearm, and was busily wiping it down with an alcohol swab. But he nodded again anyway. "You've heard of medigel?" He asked, then promptly vanished from Phil's sight, so that he had to croak out a "Yeah" as well as nodding back.

"Well," Leon went on, holding up a syrette where Phil could see it. "This stuff's similar: an experimental version you can inject, heal you from the inside out." He paused to wrap a cuff around the highest point of Phil's arm that he could reach, then went on: "The bad news is… it causes convulsions." He looked Phil in the eye. "You're gonna thrash around, maybe do your leg some more damage, and — I'm sorry, buddy — it's gonna hurt like hell. I can't give you any of the painkillers I have on me: your blood pressure…" He tailed off, and took a firm grip on Phil's hand, straightening the arm out as best he could. He grinned as a thought visibly occurred to him. "The good news? My wife had twins recently, so you can squeeze my hand as hard as you want!" Phil smiled weakly back, until the fateful question came: "You ready?"

He swallowed — grittily — clenched his teeth, and nodded. Leon nodded back, and a moment later Phil felt the scratch as the needle entered the vein. There was an awful moment of wait-for-it as Leon taped the cannula down, and then…

"Gyaaah!" Leon watched Phil's eyes widen and his pupils shrink to pinpoints. "Holy… nnnngggg. Son of a… gdschmfa!" He'd clearly taken Leon as his word, Leon thought as he focused on gripping Phil's hand and trying not to let his eyes water. Mostly, though, he was trying not to laugh at the way that, convulsions or no convulsions, the kid apparently felt it vitally necessary not to swear.

As the convulsions subsided Leon watched Phil's body go slack, and his eyes close. He checked the readout of his vitals and nodded to himself: he wasn't losing the kid, he was just dog-tired, as well he might be. Still, he was rebounding nicely, very nicely in fact; Leon looked speculatively down at him to find his eyes were open again, and looking back.

"You on the football team?" Leon asked. "Track team?"

"Uh… chess club?" Phil croaked back.

Leon grinned. "Got it. Maybe I should give chess another try, 'cause whatever it is you've been doing, you're in great shape!"

"I've been… working on a farm since I was fourteen," Phil told him, with a pause and a grimace. "My Mom's… she _was_ a big believer in hard work."

Leon wanted to swear: he'd told himself over and over again that this was a colony kid, and now there was… no colony, so there was probably nothing in the boy's life he could safely ask him about, and it had all gone out the airlock. He changed the subject: "How's the pain?"

Phil's gaze directed itself inward, and presently he sucked air sharply through his teeth: "Just tried to flex my leg," he told Leon breathlessly. "Bad idea."

"It's OK," Leon reassured him, holding another syrette where he could see it. Seeing recognition and maybe the ghost of a nod, he bent down to his I.V. line. "Here."

"Woahohhhhohhhh…" Leon wanted to laugh again: this was very clearly a clean-living country boy having his first experience with opiates. He checked his vitals again instead. All was well. He looked down again to see that Phil's eyes were more than half closed.

"OK, I'll probably have to wake you when the doctor and the engineers get here, but for now you can sleep. You could probably use it."

"Mm," he assented. Probably. "Y'r twins," he asked, "fr'ternal or idennical?"

Leon smiled an inward, father's smile. "Identical. Girls."

"S'nice." Phil smiled a vague, drugged smile. "I always thought… 'd like t' have daughters." Apparently the look on Leon's face woke him briefly back up. "You know… someday…" he clarified sheepishly.

Leon didn't bother keeping the laughter out of his voice. "Whatever you say, man. I'm not arguing. Hey, I wouldn't dare. You're a badass, you know that?"

Phil might have begged leave to doubt that, but sleep overtook him first.


End file.
